Ice Cream Run
by Dreaming-Of-A-Nightmare
Summary: Sora goes out to buy some Sea-Salt ice cream. But he has an odd encounter with a familiar face while in the shop... .:. post-KH2 oneshot, highly unlikely event, but still amusing. briefly mentioned SoKai, no other pairings unless you squint real hard.


**A/N: I blame the creation of this random oneshot on the Ventus-ending video from Birth By Sleep that I found on kh-vids(dot)net. It shows how a lot of the Org's Somebodies look… Ienzo (Zexion) and Lea (Axel) included. So I thought of something amusing and improbable to write about. Huhuhu.**

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The cheerful seventeen-year-old brunet trots down the dusty dirt road on Destiny Islands with merry change and paper munny jingling and rustling softly in his pocket, his usual smile glued to his lips. He glances upwards at the afternoon sun for a moment, enjoying its warmth and calming glow. A breeze sweeps by, smelling of palm tree leaves and tasting of salty ocean water. He licks his lips and continues on.

Turning a corner, he soon approaches the recently updated ice cream shop. Since Scrooge McDuck of Radiant Garden perfected the Sea-Salt ice cream recipe and shared it with all the connected worlds, Sora has had a hankering for it almost every weekend. He normally buys it on Saturdays, and shares it with Kairi, his best friend as well as the girl he loves. Riku, his other best friend, doesn't join them; he says that he doesn't like the combination of salty things mixed with sweet things. So Sora only ever buys it for himself and Kairi, and since today is Saturday, he decides to make another ice cream run.

He enters the shop with a little _ring-ding!_ chiming from the bell above the entrance. Still smiling, he greets the man behind the counter. "One case of Sea-Salt, please," he requests politely. The man reaches around back to the freezer and withdraws a white box containing a dozen individually-wrapped ice cream bars.

"Here you are, Sora," the man says, having learned Sora's name over time. "One case, as per usual. That'll be three hundred munny."

Sora fishes into his pocket for the blls and change, hands it to the man, and receives the white box in exchange. "Thanks!"

As Sora starts walking toward the glass door, the box under one arm and the fingers of the other brushing the metal handle, he suddenly notices through the glass a man older than he is on the other side also reaching for the handle. He steps back, startled, and allows the other person to open the door and come inside.

The man chuckles, an oddly familiar sound, only the timbre is off by a few degrees, and the octave is lower. "Thanks, short-stuff," he says, and he walks inside the shop.

Sora cannot stop staring.

The man is tall, his frame all too familiar, and his hair is an orange-red, like fire, and spiked straight up in back. He's lacking the triangular tattoos, but his eyes… they are the exact same shade of acidic emerald, sharp and bright. Sora blinks, and the man doesn't notice how he stares. He doesn't notice even as he orders the same thing as Sora, a dozen Sea-Salt ice creams.

"Axel?" Sora ventures slowly, his heart tugging slightly in response. Roxas, his Nobody, must be having a similar reaction: shock, remembrance, slight fondness.

The man pauses, seemingly to stiffen, before turning around as he holds out his payment in front of him. "Um," the man replies, "But did you just call me 'Axel'?"

Dumbly, Sora nods.

The man is handed his package and trns aroudn to face the brunet fully. He laughs a bit. "You must have mistaken me for someone else. My name is Lea, got it?"

"_Got it memorized?" _ echoes in Sora's skull. He blinks again, hard, to clear the memory. He forces a small smile. "Sorry, I guess I did confuse you with somebody I knew."

But Sora knows who Lea is. He's learned the pattern by now; Nobodies from Organization XIII almost always have the name of their Somebodies with the letters switched around and an X added into the mix. Roxas's name is that way, anyhow, and Sora can only assume from the ninth Ansem Report Jiminy obtained that the names are the same for the other members.

Lea smirks, his lips curving upwards in a disarmingly recognizable manner. "'S okay. I get it all the time. I must have one of those faces, ya know? Anyway, I didn't catch your name."

"It's Sora," the brunet murmurs, still lost in his thoughts. He wonders: once a Nobody dies, like Axel had, do they return to their Somebody, or vanish into the Darkness? And if they do return to their Somebody, does that mean that Lea has vague memories from Axel implanted in his heart? Could this man possible know Sora, at least on some level?

"Sora?" the man replies a moment later. He has a frown ebbed into his brows, a question written on them. "That's strange. I swear that I've heard that name before."

Sora's hopes rise, whether he wants them to or not. He swallows anxiously. "Really?"

But Lea is shrugging, his facial expression turning nonchalant as he adjusts his hold on the box of ice cream. "Mm, maybe not. I don't know." He smiles politely. "I'll be seeing you." And he walks past Sora, out the door and then out of sight.

Sora shakes his head to clear it. That was strange. Shaking minutely, he exits the shop and heads for home, but the encounter won't leave him. He can feel Roxas in the back of his mind, like a ghost, the blond throwing wordless questions into the air. Sora can't answer any of them, but he can sense them. And deep down, he's wondering the same exact things.


End file.
